Imagine yoga’s
history as India’s geography. You are flying over the Ganges River from its
source in the Himalayas to its mouth on the Bay of Bengal. You can’t see much.
Most of the terrain is blanketed in clouds just as much of yoga’s past is
cloaked in the mists of time. Occasionally, the vista opens up. You gaze
intensely at each of these viewpoints to note the flow has grown in size and
changed in color from tributaries that fed the river at junctions you did not
witness but can reliably assume, much like academics squinting at the few yoga
texts that dot the course of yoga’s development note shifts suggesting a new
ideological stream has added to the winding course of yoga’s historical
evolution.
